The Independent Electoral Commission has come up with a contingency measure to ensure that residents of informal settlements are able to register to vote even though they do not have addresses.
The mushrooming of informal settlements initially wreaked havoc with the voters’ roll which required all voters to have addresses. Vuyelwa Molebatsi is a 35 year-old mother of three. She has been living in Khotha informal settlement in Ward 10 in Mangaung for five years.
In this place they have neither basic services nor addresses. Molebatsi says she usually votes at freedom square where her mother lives because there she can provide an address. The IEC says no one will be excluded from voting.
IEC Free State Provincial Commissioner Jabulani Tshabalala says that the IEC and Mangaung Metro went on a campaign to ensure that residents are allocated temporary addresses and those without them can use descriptive addresses describing where they live so that they can be added on the voter’s roll.
Khotha informal settlement residents raised issues with the ANC leadership including service delivery issues. Outgoing Free State Premier, now Secretary General Ace Magashule of the governing party, raised their hopes.
“They want sites and that what we agreed with the mayor that they must get sites, “says Magashule.
Residents can only wait and see if his promises are realised.
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